No Taste Like Home

About author / Amy Powell

World traveler; gourmet 30 minute meals; lover of exotic ingredients; winner on FoodTV's Chefs vs City; graduate French Culinary Institute. Her recipes will tantalize your taste buds.

Often it is through travel that we come to realize those things close to home that we hold most dear. Food is one of the most immediate sources of nostalgia when on the road. For example, after two weeks of eating tacos in Mexico it is unlikely that you will head straight to Taco Bell upon your return to the States. Rather, as the palate wearies of salsa and Margaritas your mind might start drifting to ketchup and bourbon, those comfort foods you associate with home, the familiar. As I take to the road this Labor Day weekend for an end-of-summer vacation, I am reminded of those foods that I have craved during my travels and those I will miss on this trip to come.

Living abroad for a semester during college in London, a city not unlike many American metropolises, one would hardly expect much home sickness for American food. Yet with a national cuisine that still predominantly consists of pub food such as bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes) or fish (always fried) and chips (otherwise known as “French Fries”), it is not hard to understand how after a few weeks us students all longed for a little taste of home. So it was that my friends and I spent many a weekend brunch nursing our Paddy’s and ginger hangovers at little place in South Kensington called Tootsies. In addition to a solid English breakfast, this place also offered a taste of home in the form of a perfectly decent hamburger and French fries. Perhaps just because of the name those fries tasted better than any “chips” we had anywhere else.

While I studied in London, friends from the US took to more exotic locales for their own studies, from Madrid to Seville, Paris to South Africa. Food lovers by nature, none of us had a taste for fast food back in the States and yet somehow many of us picked up the same love for a certain McDonald’s food item while overseas: soft serve on a cone. Maybe it was because it was cheap: for less than a US dollar you could find a taste of home that was the same no matter which country you had it in. Maybe it was because it was actually delicious: the perfect soft texture, cool temperature, and slight chemically vanilla flavor was tasty then and continues to tempt us now whether at home or abroad.

Unlike McDonald’s soft serve, for which I unabashedly admit my love, there are certain “American” foods I only eat when travelling. For some reason Pringles and Sprite are two foods that seem universally available, at least in every country I’ve travelled so far. My brother and I made dinner out of these two faker-than-fake foods on multiple overnight rides in buses and trains while travelling through Vietnam several years back. Then in South Africa I explored the unique taste of their barbecue variety Pringles at truck stops while road tripping with a friend from Johannesburg to Kruger National Park. When travel gets rough and the food options are bleak, it is good to know that two stalwarts of the American junk food scene, soda and chips, will be there to get me through to the next good meal.

Preparing for this trip to Asia, I am not yet in American nostalgia mode for my mind can hardly be still with anticipation of the curries, noodle soups, and dumplings to come. In fact, ask me most times during the year what a comfort food is and I will probably cite some version of an Asian noodle soup be it phó, Hue noodles, ramen, or soba. But as I ready to indulge in my culinary fantasies abroad I am pausing to think what in the way of food I might miss in the days to come, when I abandon the vast network of Whole Foods stores and white table cloth restaurants of the US for the plastic chairs and street vendors of South East Asia.

In my opinion there is not much in the way of food that is not done right in South East Asia. If I were to have to survive off one cuisine for the rest of my life the tropical fruits and rice noodle soups of Vietnam would do me just fine. But if I were to miss anything, good cheese and good wine are a bit hard to come by in that part of the world. And even just a week without can sometimes leave my palate wanting.

So a last supper is in order to bid my kitchen, cheese and wine bon voyage. Some onions grilled slowly on a grill pan in olive oil and thyme is a nice compliment to the aged white cheddar I’ve grated and piled high on two slices of buttered sourdough bread. With the onions sandwiched between, a few minutes on each side produces a golden crust oozing with molten cheese--just daring me not to go, lest I not taste this goodness again for some time. A nice bottle or red, a bold Napa Cabernet or Rhone blend from Paso Robles is just the thing to send me off.

Eating for me on this trip will surely be heaven. But in case there are moments where meals are lacking it is good to know that a little taste of home can be had for pennies: on a cone, in a bag of chips, or with the pop of a soda can. As for the cheese and wine, it will just taste that much better on my return, for there is no taste like home.

Serves/Makes: 1

• 2 slices (1/2 inch thick) onion
• 1 sprig fresh thyme
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 ounces aged white cheddar cheese
• butter